Perchance to Dream
by primadonnabloodbath
Summary: Raiden has everything he'd ever dreamed of. A loving family, perfect grades, three of the best friends in the world he's ever had. That's how he knows something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. One-shot, based off the BTAS ep of the same name.


**A/N:** It's a Christmas tradition for my family to marathon Batman movies for half the freakin' day. I'm not kidding you, we have like, eight Batman-themed ornaments on our tree right now. Also, I read Twiphase's set of multi-crossover fics a week ago, so blame them for the main inspiration for this bizzare little fic. Happy Christmas, fandom! Maybe next year i'll make a parody of A Better World.

 **Disclaimer:** You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why! I don't own this series or its characters! SING IT!

* * *

The punctuated pounding on Ray's door awoke him from a deep, dreamless sleep. He groggily lifted his head up and yawned, blinking in the dim light from his half-opened window. Downstairs, he could hear his mother making breakfast, and his father and grandfather talking about something he couldn't quite make out.

In fact, he wasn't really sure how he got back in bed in the first place. The last thing he remembered was trying to keep a rare Water Civilization artifact out of Tiera's hands. Rumor said that it apparently could make someone's wildest dreams come true, or their very worst nightmares. He'd been facing off her Trench Hunter, clutching onto the artifact tightly when he was blasted at… and now he was suddenly here?

It was all very confusing, but he decided to chalk it up as nothing more than him being knocked out and then brought back home by the masters. He yawned again, crawled out of bed, changed out of this pajamas and into his everyday clothes. He made his way downstairs quickly, not wanting to keep anyone waiting any longer.

To his surprise, Alakshmi was sitting at the table, having a bowl of cereal. She turned her head a bit when she heard his footsteps behind her. "Well, look who's finally conscious again." She said, turning back to her cereal.

Ray rubbed the side of his head as he took a seat next to her, and poured a glass of milk. "Yeah, I know. I should be more careful." His mother placed a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast on the counter in front of them and smiled a bit tensely. "Be nice to your brother, Alakshmi." She said.

Ray, who was in the middle of drinking, proceeded to spit take at Mach 2. He coughed up violently as his mother walked over to his side to see if he was alright. Ray held out a hand as he slowly caught as breath and finished dry heaving. "I'm-I'm good! Just bit my tongue, that's all."

Okay, this was a brand new development. So, he got knocked unconscious, and now Alakshmi is suddenly his sister? That's… not how possible concussions work. That's not at all how possible concussions work. Ray got himself breakfast from the platter as he stewed on this thought. Maybe his mother was being sarcastic (in a mom way), and the two of them were so close it was like they were siblings?

Ray's confusion only peaked when he saw his father walk in with both eyes still intact. And longer hair and no massive gash-scars on his back (which were usually only slightly visible underneath his shirt). At this point, Ray kind of tried to ignore what was going on around himself. But, he was once again dragged into the cold grips of this reality with a fatherly pat on the back.

"Good morning," He said cheerfully. "Did you sleep well?"

"A little _too_ well, if you ask me." Ray said under his breath, nibbling on the end of a piece of bacon. He put down the bacon, and got up from the table. "I'm… just gonna be out with Allie and Gabe, alright?" He rushed over to the door, where his backpack has already waiting for him, and headed out.

"You need me to drive you?" Alakshmi called, as he stood in the doorway. "No… I'm fine!" he called back, nearly slamming the door behind him and running out of the driveway. This was way too weird for him. He tried to remember something, _anything_ from yesterday, but his mind was coming up all blank. What if something was blocking his thoughts, and preventing him from remembering?

* * *

After this brief flash of panic, he stopped running, and sat down on a bench. He opened up his pack, and went into his sketchbook. He leaved through it, hoping that maybe there was a possible hint or clue in there. What he _did_ find, however, was something much weirder.

In between his drawings, there were odd little circular scribbles, popping up at random. Sometimes they were next to a drawing, overlapping words and names, other times they were just peppered with no rhyme or reason on top of them. There were even a few pages with nothing but this weird scribbly mess and broad stokes of ink and lead. Had Gargle gotten ahold of his sketchbook, or something?

"Hey, Ray!" Allie's voice broke him out of this funk, and he looked up. Allie and Gabe were both standing in front of him. "What's up?"

"Oh! Not much, y'know?" He internally gave a sigh of relief. "It's just that there are some really weird things going on around here. Hey, where's Lucy?"

"At her martial arts class. The usual." Allie said, with a bit of a disappointed tone in her voice. "She hasn't really had a lot of time to hang out, lately."

"Martial… do you mean her Kaijudo training?"

Gabe shook his head. "I'm pretty sure it's pronounced Hapki-do. And I'm not really sure if that's what they teach, anyways. I barely ever see anyone in there."

Okay, things had just reached maximum weirdness for poor Ray. He suddenly has a full family, his father never seemed to have been trapped in the creature realm, and now Allie and Gabe don't know about Kaijudo, or the temple beneath the dojo? Ray stood up, a little shaken at this, but he quickly collected himself, put away his sketchbook and picked up his pack.

"Maybe we should go over there and see how she's doing?" he suggested. "For moral support and all that."

Gabe and Allie agreed, and the three set off towards the dojo, with an acute sense of dread thick in Ray's mind. Everything was getting weirder and weirder by the second, and the next stop could only get worse from here. But, he tried to keep himself cool and collected on the outside, in order not to confuse anyone as much as he was.

When they finally made it there, Lucy was just coming out of the dojo, yawning softly as she closed the door behind herself. Ray took one look at her and felt guilty. Her hair was a tangled mess, barely uncovering both her eyes, and speaking of eyes, hers had massive dark circles underneath them (or at least the one he could see). She looked over at the three, waving sleepily.

Ray ran over to her. "Lucy? Oh man, you look…"

"Don't say it!" she sharply retorted, as sharply as an extremely sleep deprived fourteen year-old could sound. "I'm good, though. I wasn't… training for quite as long." She yawned again. "What're you guys doing here?"

"I wanted to invite you over!" Ray said without thinking. "We can all hang out at my house, and talk about… stuff. It'll probably help you to clear your head."

"Uh. Sure?" Lucy said, rubbing her eyes a bit more. And the three of them headed back to Ray's house.

* * *

Ray was currently going over what he'd witnessed and pieced together. His parents were normal, possibly never found out about Kaijudo, Allie and Gabe definitely never found out about Kaijudo, Lucy did, but she's extremely strung out for some odd reason… and Alakshmi is his sister. Somehow, that last part still wasn't making sense to him.

But, they arrived back at his house, made popcorn, and watched a movie together in the downstairs living room, it all seemed just like a normal day for all of them, even if Ray was just putting off his weird feelings of unease in a bizarre new world. After they were half an hour in, Ray excused himself to get more popcorn and nonchalantly walked out of the room, before turning on his heel and going straight down the hall to investigate what was going on.

He knew his mother used to make scrapbooks when he was real little, but she stopped around the fourth house they moved into because she kept losing supplies. He went straight into his mother's room, and looked under the bed. Sure enough, a cardboard box with "scrapbooks" in his mother's messy handwriting was there.

He opened the box gently, trying to make as little noise as possible. There was only one book in there, the rest of the box was filled to the brim with stickers and felt markers. He pulled the book out slowly, and opened it.

Inside were dozens of pictures of himself and Alakshmi and the rest of his family. Apparently his mother and father had proper wedding, with each sides of both his families there, and she'd been adopted by them before the Choten had gotten his hands on her. He skimmed through the rest of the pages, most of them were just pictures of the two of them at very young ages at various holidays with their parents.

But, as he went on further, he started to see the little circular scribbles again. But this time, they were darker, and more grouped together. They only appeared in margins and spaces at first, but soon grew to cover up faces and entire pictures with dark black ink circles. The power suddenly zapped out above his head, and he could hear Allie protesting that they ''had just gotten to the good part' from downstairs.

Ray ran out of his mother's room. "Is everything alright? I can check to see if we blew out a fuse-"

"No!" Lucy suddenly shouted, gaining a fearful look in her eyes. "I got it. I'll take care of this." She picked up her own bag, and ran downstairs, into the basement.

"Wait! Lucy!" Ray yelled back at her, following her downstairs. He nearly tripped in his rush to catch up, with her, and stood down at the bottom of the steps to catch his breath.

A very familiar trilling noise could be heard coming from behind him, and he slowly turned around to see a pair of bright green eyes staring back at him. "Squeaky?"

Oh, it was her, alright. Ray would recognize those sickly-sweet irises anywhere. But her eyes slammed shut as she morphed into her true from, roaring horribly as she pounced on top of him, a thick stream of drool pouring from her fangs.

"Squeaky! What's gotten into you?!" Ray yelled, knowing exactly what had gotten into her. Without Allie to save her, the poor thing had to escape from Lord Skycrusher's palace all by herself. Apparently, she was still a bit scarred from that experience, and Ray gently shoved her off, not trying to scare her any more.

As Ray scrambled back up to his feet, Squeaky clawed one of her paws into the ground, and readied herself for another charge, until a voice called out form the darkness.

"Scaradorable of Gloom Hollow, be gone!"

Dark claws shot up from the ground as Squeaky tried to run and dodge them. But, they grabbed onto her back legs and dragged her into a black void as she screeched and roared in protest. With a crackle of lightning and a dark flash of purple, the Chimera was gone and banished back into her realm. Standing just outside of the light was Lucy, looking more tired and scared than Ray had ever seen her.

"You. You weren't supposed to see that." She said, with a horrified tone in her voice. "You really weren't supposed to see that!"

"Lucy! It's fine! Calm down! I…" Ray tried to think of the best way to keep Lucy from panicking any further. "Already know all about the Kaiju realm. And, Kaijudo, though that's probably obvious."

She gave a sigh of relief and sat down, pulling her legs close to her body and holding them there. "That's a huge load offa my mind." Ray sat down next to her, unsure of where to follow up on this. And then, after a good six minutes of silence he asked "How long have you known about it yourself?"

"About a year, give or take." She said, sleepily smiling. "I mean, it was cool at first. Who wouldn't want to do what the Masters do, be a superhero on a daily basis, right? But, it kinda got in the way of the rest of my life. I don't think I've slept at all this week because of my training."

"Man, are they running you ragged or something?"

"No! No, not at all! I just really want to impress them. Apparently to be anybody who's anybody, you need to be some kinda born natural at this." She giggled at bit at that last part. "I'm not that girl."

Ray thought about this before putting his head in his hands. "No, I get it now." Lucy looked up at him, confused. "This isn't real. It's some kinda illusion made by that artifact. It's trying to teach me that I shouldn't be so selfish."

"Ray, you're not selfish!" Lucy assured. "What's so selfish about wanting your loved ones to just have normal lives?"

"Yeah, but I never thought of how it would affect other people! I was only thinking… wait." Ray looked back up at Lucy. "How did you know what I wished for?"

"Because I'm here to help you." She said, in a much more energized voice. Ray's eyes widened, and he backed up. "Uh, I'm real sorry about this ahead of time." And with that, she smacked Ray across the face as hard as she could.

* * *

Ray woke up, gasping for air in the Temple's hospital wing. Lucy was on a bed right next to him, and she slowly opened her eyes as he woke up, and sat up straight. "Hey, it worked!"

"Of course it worked. " Sasha said, floating down from where she was currently levitating over the two, keeping a calm watch over. "I was mostly worried that you would not awaken yourself, and be sucked into lies of this Bottle of Wishes." She then hovered over to Ray. "How are you currently feeling?"

Ray could only breathlessly nod, thankful for once that he was woken up from a dream.


End file.
